Celestia Moonweaver's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Celestia Moonweaver spread the cards on the reading table for the third time that night, and for the third time the Tower came up blank in the middle. She leaned closer. The lightning bolt was still there. The falling figures were still there. But the thing at the top of the tower, the shape she needed to name, had worn down to a smear of gray pulp. She had inherited this deck from her grandmother. She had used it every day for eleven years. Now the coven at the edge of the woods was asking her what the card meant, and she could not tell them. Three cottages in the thicket had already lost their roofs to a storm no almanac predicted. The witches who lived there wanted a warning. All Celestia could give them was half a picture. Her barn owl landed on the windowsill and dropped a folded note from its beak. The paper was damp. The message was short. Another cottage gone. Come now. Celestia did not go. She climbed the stairs of the tower instead, up past the reading room, up to the storage floor she had avoided since the funeral. Her grandmother's chest sat under a sheet. Celestia pulled the sheet off. The lock had no key. It never had. She pressed her palm to the stone set in the lid and said the only word her grandmother had made her memorize. The lid opened. Inside, wrapped in black silk, was a second deck. The cards were sharper than any print she had ever seen. The edges were gilt. A folded letter sat on top. Use these only when the old ones fail you. They see more. They also ask more. She did not have time to wonder what that meant. She carried the new deck down to the table, shuffled it once, and drew. The Tower came up first. This time the card was clear. The lightning struck from a clear sky. The falling figures wore the pointed hoods of the coven. And the shape at the top of the tower, the shape her old deck had hidden for years, was a face. A human face. Someone she knew. Someone the coven trusted. Celestia stared at it until her hands began to shake. Then a cluster of pink fairies drifted in through the open window, drawn by the new deck's glow, and hovered above the card as if waiting for her to speak. She could not. Naming the face would mean accusing one of her own. She folded the card into her sleeve, whistled for the owl, and started down the stairs toward the thicket. She had her warning now. She also had a problem worse than a worn deck. She had to decide, before she reached the cottages, whether to tell the coven the truth or lie to protect the person in the picture.